


moros

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of the Snap, Avoidance, First Kiss, Future Fic, Guilt, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15531909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: There were fourteen million universes Stephen had birthed into existence and let die and, in far more than he cared to count, the visitor standing before him had become something… dear.





	moros

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bold_seer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/gifts).



The Sanctum has braved many, many visitors over the years, some there for good, some for ill, always out of necessity and mostly as unwelcome as Stephen could make them in the hopes that they would leave. He wasn’t unreasonable, of course, knew he could be thoroughly friendly by every recognizable standard when required—well, perhaps Thor would disagree about that, but Thor wasn’t here and Stephen had ultimately helped him and his snake of a brother even if maybe he’d purposefully tweaked the pair of them in the process—but mostly these days he was interested in books, in study, in convincing Wong that his preferred brand of peanut butter was inferior to Stephen’s.

It was safer that way. Books, study, arguing with Wong? It cleared the detritus of millions of worlds from his mind, entire universes where this change made that change and lo, suddenly everything was different and worse and nothing at all like it should have been. Even if none of that mattered now. Thanos was defeated, the universe un-Snapped—snaps, snaps were the one thing he couldn’t untether from his mind no matter how hard he tried, snaps because in universes numbered 5,439,102 through 7,495,932 he’d managed to see what Thanos had done with that wretched gauntlet first hand, such an innocent gesture for the wholesale slaughter of billions. Snaps haunted his dreams sometimes, that dreadful click of fingers turning half of everything to dust and ash around him, sometimes him, too.

For the rest of the unlucky half of the galaxy, none of it might as well have happened. It was only Stephen and those who’d lived in the aftermath who knew the true extent of the horror.

And even then, Stephen knew it so much more viscerally than anyone else ever could.

There were fourteen million universes Stephen had birthed into existence and let die and, in far more than he cared to count, the visitor standing before him had become something… dear.

Stephen fought back a grimace. Dear. Such a damned, feeble word. And nothing he could ever admit to.

“Stark,” he said, talking to the perfectly tailored suit and sunglasses, like that was all Tony was, a storm composed entirely of Prada and Tom Ford bullshit. But he’d seen Tony defeated in every conceivable manner, watched tragedy come for him in so many ways.

There was no more intimate knowledge than that and few in the galaxy that he admired as much as a result. Even if Tony tried so very hard to undermine that by darkening his doorstep unannounced and uninvited. 

And all he was to Tony in return was the asshole who made Thanos’s job a little bit easier.

Stephen wasn’t easily injured, not where other people’s opinions of him were concerned. And yet this ate at him, settled like a parasite in his heart and chewed through everything that made him him and left behind something like guilt, something like desire. 

He wished it hadn’t had to be this way, but there had been no time, ironic, and no better options, pathetic.

Those Tonys he’d met, he reminded himself, weren’t this Tony.

“So, yeah. I’ve been thinking,” Tony said. His hands danced in the air and his body twisted so his eyes could better rove across every surface of the Sanctum’s interior. Stephen could see judgments, calculations, and interest pass in quick, flickering succession. He pulled the sunglasses from his eyes and tucked them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

“Isn’t that something of a novelty for you?” Stephen answered, a little delayed. Not his best riposte, but good enough that it got a bark of laughter out of Tony. 

If the universe was merciful, it would swallow Stephen whole and free him from the realization that making Tony laugh actually felt like an _accomplishment_.

“Good. Clever.” Tony wagged his finger. “And utterly besides the point. I like what you’ve done with the place. Looks better than I remember it.”

“I take true solace in knowing there is a point. Perhaps you would care to get to it?” Crossing his arms, Stephen jerked his head toward the stairs. Might as well get him out of the foyer and onto that point because the sooner he was gone, the better. As he climbed, he fully expected Tony to follow, both wished he would and the opposite. “I have better things to do than field visitors.”

Tony’s shoes clicked, light, against the wood behind him. “Like hiding.”

“Hiding is underrated, that is true, but I was thinking, oh, unraveling the mysteries of the universe might be nice. Figure out how to stop someone like Thanos from coming to power again. Maybe make a sandwich without touching the bread.” He turned and glanced down at Tony, pleased that at least for the moment, he had the upper hand, even if it was merely a visual one. “It’s not so different from how you tinker with Parker’s suits twenty hours a day, is it?”

The flare of anger in Tony’s eyes was worth it even if it made Stephen feel a bit like shit to use that against him. It wasn’t like Stephen actually had proof, not beyond the minute changes he saw in Spider-Man’s gear every time he showed in some video footage or other. On the other hand, it wasn’t like Stephen didn’t know exactly what had happened in over twelve million realities and the many and varied ways that result had destroyed him.

“We all have our coping mechanisms,” he answered through gritted teeth and a predatorially cheerful smile. 

Maybe if he offended Tony enough, he’d leave. That was a strategy.

It really would be ideal if he left.

“I know what you’re doing,” Tony said. His voice was raised not in anger but with superiority. He sounded like a child, too impressed with himself and gleeful for having put Stephen in a corner. “You’re avoiding me. The other Avengers all talk about it.”

“Huh.” Stephen resumed climbing the steps. Tony was only winding him up, but that didn’t stop a frisson of unhappiness from welling up inside of him. How was it that Stephen was this unlucky? Who could have guessed Tony would even think to presume something like that? It wasn’t as though they regularly made time for one another as a habit. He seriously doubted any of the other Avengers cared at all what Stephen Strange got up to, but he was willing to play along. “Well, if that’s how they want to spend their time, who am I to stop them? Also, I’m not an Avenger. Independent contractor at best. I didn’t ask to be part of your little gang. Again, too busy.”

“You’d be a big asset to the team,” Tony continued. “And you won’t even return my phone calls.”

He thought about Thor, who saw no reason to own a computer, and concluded that that man was the true genius among them. Motioning Tony into the library, he asked, “Are you really here to recruit me,” and ignored the scent of Tony’s cologne. “Now?”

“No better time than peacetime,” Tony quipped. The leather chair he chose creaked as he practically threw himself into it, crossing his legs. It was, of course, Stephen’s favorite chair.

Tony’s true superpower wasn’t his brain or his money: it was his ability to sniff out every possible source of annoyance and exploit it. “Have you considered retirement instead?”

“Doesn’t look good on me.” Examining his own nails, he sucked on his teeth. “Retirement.” Then he pushed himself to his feet again and approached Stephen. It made Stephen’s heart trip all over itself in a way he hadn’t felt in years, hadn’t thought himself capable of feeling again. He’d been so young back before he learned to have confidence in himself after all. “Though I suppose you don’t look any worse for wear.”

“I don’t consider what I do ‘retirement.’” And he didn’t consider the possibility that Tony was trying to flirt with him. Not when all he wanted to do was flirt back. Time Stone safely back in his possession, he could play this out in every permutation he could have wanted, strategize and fish for the ideal version of events to get what he wanted out of this one. 

The very thought made him sick.

“What does it matter anyway?” Stephen continued. The guilt he felt galloped around inside of him, stamped on what little patience he could muster. “I wouldn’t consider myself Avengers material. You should know that. I think you do know that somewhere in that dim-witted skull of yours.”

Tony’s mouth quirked, but he shook his head. “See, this is where you’re losing me. You saw everything that could have happened. You knew, I’m assuming, what was going to happen to you if you did what you did. You could even presume to know what I’d think about it.”

“Benefit of being the Sorcerer Supreme, I guess.” But Tony didn’t have to expose it quite so openly. “All sorts of inconvenient truths assert themselves. I did what I had to do. It worked out. End of story. There is nothing heroic in that.”

“I know what guilt looks like, Doc. Hell, I’ve danced to this song a million times all on my own.” There was enough pity in his features to make Stephen want to lash out, push Tony away, scream at him.

It’d been a long time since bars had squeezed him into a cell like this. Since the accident, at least. And he didn’t like being there again. The walls of the Sanctum collapsed inward in his mind and Tony seemed so much closer than he truly was, an optical illusion. “It’s not guilt I feel, Tony.” A lie, a lie.

Tony.

 _Tony_.

Fucking fuck. Stephen was screwed.

And there was a crack in his voice that Tony had to have noticed, a microscopic fissure beneath which so much more remained. His gaze sharpened too much in that moment and his grin turned victorious.

“Oh, I get it,” he said, so damned smug that even the Cloak of Levitation took note, rousing itself to find out what was going on. It floated behind Tony, the collar tipping curiously, ridiculous as ever. It’s appearance was the only thing that kept Stephen from grabbing Tony by _his_ collar and doing something incredibly stupid.

Tony snapped his fingers and stabbed Stephen in the chest and Stephen couldn’t help it, he flinched. Tony hadn’t been there; Tony didn’t know. And Captain Rogers must not have told him, the bastard. But Stephen couldn’t either. “Please don’t do that.” Swallowing, he drew in a deep breath and put the thought as far from his mind as he could. There were more important things to consider.

Like the way Tony’s hand lingered, his palm across Stephen’s sternum, an anchor he’d neither asked for nor wanted. “I never really thought about what it must have been like,” he said in a low murmur, his words considered. “Fourteen million ways we all managed to fuck it up. That’s gotta be some shit.”

Stephen batted Tony’s hand aside and regretted the action almost immediately. Because that was what he apparently was now, a sentimentalist. Tony’s conclusion was mostly correct, but he was either conveniently or genuinely forgetting the key piece: Stephen had traded the Time Stone for him. Him. Specifically. “I don’t want your pity.”

“That’s not the word I’d use.” His gaze lowered then, thick, black lashes fanning across his cheeks. It wasn’t that Stephen wanted to see his eyes. In fact, it was probably for the best that he didn’t. But that really didn’t stop his hands from itching to tip Tony’s chin up, put that mouth of his to better work than this. And maybe stop his mind from churning through each and every wrong move he’d ever made between the time when the Hulk destroyed his home and the moment he turned to ash, to dust along with half the universe.

“Then what word would you use?” He flicked his hand in a shooing gesture meant to send the Cloak on its way. “I don’t see another that is of any use whatsoever under the circumstances.”

“Would awe work? Or is that too… I don’t know. Poetic?”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like you,” Stephen snapped. He tired of this and of Tony’s presence here. It was one thing to know this thing about himself, this impossible thing, and another to have it thrown in his face by someone who didn’t know any better. He’d always been arrogant in matters of the heart until now. The sudden turn into uncertainty suited him poorly. And he would just as soon rid himself of the source than confront it. “But if that’s what you wanted to say, consider it heard, I’m very flattered, but please feel free to not stop by again, hmm?”

He gestured toward the stairs and regretted very much having brought Tony up here instead of letting him stew in the foyer.

Tony’s mouth quirked. “Cute. But I’m serious. We didn’t really talk about it, did we? Afterward. I got to watch you go _poof_ and then we got you back and then everything went back to normal and then you sequestered yourself here. I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D. had a field day trying to explain just what in the hell happened, but…”

“I thought you had a point in coming here? Tell me it’s not S.H.I.E.L.D. because if it is…” He was weary and his heart slammed painfully against his chest and he really didn’t have time for any of this. It was annoying to watch Tony work out his own thought processes out loud like this, use Stephen as a sounding board and waste his time in the process.

“You were perfectly happy to throw me to Thanos to protect the Time Stone. I get that. Don’t know if I could do it, but I can respect that kind of dedication when a giant genocidal grape is involved. But then you gave it up anyway.”

“As I remember, we already discussed this.” Turning away, Stephen took a few steps, pretended that his attention was elsewhere. He needed the breathing space, the moment to gather his thoughts. Here he was, a grown man, unable to confront Tony Stark. It should have been easy to tear him back down to size. Before, he would have considered it a public service.

“Yeah, yeah. I was the key to this whole mess, blah blah blah. Forgive me if I’m not one-hundred percent convinced I was the one factor that made a difference there. You were taking a chance on me. I need to know why.”

Sparks flickered to life across Stephen’s knuckles. It really wouldn’t have been so very hard to just disappear Tony back to his home and set fresh wards on the Sanctum. In fact, that sounded like a perfectly reasonable solution to the situation at hand, but it really wouldn’t solve his problem forever, would it? Turning away, he ran his hand over the back of his neck, squeezed and rubbed to ease the tension as best he could.

Tony wouldn’t give up.

He never gave up.

That was what Stephen had learned.

“I watched you die and kill and watched you watch everyone around you die.” Though he couldn’t face Tony, he was pleased that he managed to keep his voice steady in the recitation. “And through it all, you always fought. You fought to every single end. It didn’t matter if Thanos destroyed you on Titan or back on Earth or anywhere in between. If we escaped or we didn’t. The only thing that had to happen was you needed to survive. I didn’t. Parker didn’t. I believed that if you did, you’d find a way. Thanos always got what he wanted in the end, but in the universe where he didn’t get you, we won. If that’s not enough, I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Stephen wasn’t a man of loving words or grand gestures and he could not admit that it was a fool’s hope that Tony would take the path he’d followed in that one golden timeline where they won. He didn’t know Tony would. 

But he believed. 

How did someone like Stephen explain that?

“You trusted me,” Tony said, sounding far too stunned for such a simple declaration. 

“I rather thought that was obvious. Excellent deduction, Stark.”

Tony’s hand fell on his shoulder, gripped him tight as Tony turned him around. Stephen went, though he could have fought or argued. The truth was he wanted Tony’s touch on his body, even if it was only experienced through a Henley and a tank top.

Tony’s head tilted, considering, and his eyes narrowed, too thoughtful. It disconcerted Stephen to have that much of Tony’s intellect directed at pulling him apart. Tony was an engineer through and through. If he wanted to, he could dismantle Stephen. 

He had, in universes 345,423 through 345,425, before Stephen put a stop to it for his own sanity. 

“There’s more to it,” Tony concluded, arrogant and presumptuous.

“Maybe I just think you’re cute,” he answered, equally arrogant, though twice as snide. 

Tony’s lip twitched and if Stephen had liked the look of him before, it was nothing on this moment. Triumphant and victorious, he was practically radiant. 

_Radiant, really, Stephen? That’s what you’re going with,_ he thought, disgusted with himself. This had gone on far too long. Better, then, to pull the plug. Why the fuck not?

He grabbed Tony by the lapels, the knuckles of one hand colliding with the sunglasses through layers of expensive wool, and pulled Tony close, pulled him in, brought that stupid radiant mouth within inches of his own.

 _You mean something to me_ , he couldn’t say, _but I have to let it go_.

And even though he didn’t voice the words out loud, Tony’s gaze sparked with challenge. _Oh, yeah_ , Tony didn’t say, _says who?_

Stephen’s thumb swiped across Tony’s chin. Though he could barely feel the rasp of Tony’s facial hair, no amount of magic could fully solve the damage done there, he heard it and watched Tony’s mouth open slightly. Stephen studied him. He wasn’t an engineer, but he’d been a surgeon once. He knew bodies and how to manipulate them.

Maybe Stephen had been an idiot after all. “Cute maybe isn’t the right word for it,” he admitted, before bringing Tony’s mouth to his. It was softer than he expected and his lips were more pliant, willing to be led. 

Odd, given how mouthy he was. And different from before, when Tony had been broken by Thanos, by fate.

But it wasn’t long before Tony got demanding, pulling at the hem of Stephen’s shirt. Stephen wanted nothing more than to see this through to the endgame. But undressing hadn’t been the goal. It was the opposite of that, really, and Stephen placed his hand over Tony’s to stop him. “Tony,” he said, quiet. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve figured it all out.” He sounded so confident, so certain; Stephen wanted to believe him. “I get it.”

Stephen’s heart sped up again, rattled against the cage of his sternum.

The smile Tony offered then was radiant, genuinely so. In all the versions of the universe he’d visited, he’d never seen that before.

If there was something worthy of awe here, it was that. It might have humbled entirely a lesser man than Stephen.

“I respect what you did. That’s all I came here to say. But I like you, too. I don’t just waltz into any old Sanctum on a whim because its occupant won’t talk to me,” was all Tony said, grabbing Stephen’s face between his hands, so much more than Stephen could have expected. His fingers were as clever as his mouth and it was better than anything Stephen could have expected. It was so good that it came as a shock when Tony ended the kiss and flicked him between the eyes. “Stop avoiding me. I don’t blame you for what happened.”

He caught Tony’s fingers between his and pressed a kiss to the pad of each. “Yeah, okay,” he said. The guilt in his chest didn’t dissipate, but its hold was shaken loose, gave Stephen room to breath that he hadn’t had in weeks, months, maybe years depending on how you counted Time. “Maybe I can do that.”

And maybe he could let this be the one universe that mattered.

If he was able to do that, then he was willing to make it count.


End file.
